Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Winnie
Why is it that when James acts like he doesn’t need my help, it only fuels my desire to show him EXACTLY how much he does?
At some point, I need to cut my losses and give up. But this is not that point. Right now, standing in the lobby of the hotel and conference center, I’m doubling down on making him see how much help I can be.
I got mad in the truck, or maybe hurt is more like it.
I’m sure some of my delicate emotional state was due to Chevy bringing Dad up just before we left.
I hate talking about Dad or thinking about Dad or being forced to hear someone else talk about Dad.
I’d like to enact a permanent Dad-ban on my life.
Especially when I then have to sit in the cab of a truck and listen to James Graham dismiss me like I’m nothing.
This morning kind of sucks. The excitement I had about this trip has deflated like a discarded party balloon.
I’m trying to recover, trying to focus on my new goal of becoming indispensable to the man who seems like he wishes he’d left me by the side of the road.
Or maybe back in Sheet Cake. I’m honestly not even sure at this point why he brought me along.
The stuff with my Dad is always going to linger.
It’s fine. I can shove it into a dark corner where it belongs.
As for James, I don’t need to take anything personally.
He is frequently short and snappish with people, and I don’t always think it means he’s mad or thinks they’re dumb.
He’s just … like this. So, I’m not going to be offended or put off by what he said on the drive. I’ll simply prove my worth.
Val, who is obsessed with the enneagram, would say this is because I’m an eight—the challenger.
That’s her unofficial assessment of my number, anyway, since I won’t take the test. (Which she says also affirms my eightness.) Whatever the reason, I’m determined to learn everything I can at the conference, make a connection with as many essential vendors as possible, and walk out of this weekend with a whole arsenal of things to make Dark Horse succeed.
Not just because I love a challenge. I actually found myself excited about the sessions and the conference as a whole.
I thought of this job as something to keep me afloat until I find something else or sell Neighborly, but I’m honestly more interested than I have been about anything in a long time.
The hotel in downtown Austin is teeming with people, not unlike the ant farm I tried and failed to keep alive when I was a kid.
Apparently, in addition to the Craft Beer Conference, there’s some kind of multilevel-marketing convention peddling leggings—at least, that’s my guess based on the sea of blinding colors and dizzying patterns on legs of all shapes and sizes.
Then there’s the Junior Clowning Coalition. If you thought adult clowns were creepy, you just haven’t seen a child in full sad-clown makeup miming being trapped in a box. Or a teenager with white makeup pancaked over acne.
If the creepy kid clowns are known by their face paint and the MLM boss women by their leggings, I’m guessing the craft brewers are the big group sporting flannel and beards.
There are a few fancy mustaches mixed in, the kind where the ends are delicately curled, probably with some high-priced product called Stache Wax.
But so far, James is the only man I’ve seen with stubble-free cheeks.
“What’s the holdup?” I ask James, as he’s turning a snarling face away from the reception desk.
“Room mix-up,” he grumbles.
With a teasing smile on my lips, I lean close—ONLY so he can hear me, NOT because I love the way he smells. “Worried we’ll be stuck in a room with one bed?”
James jerks back like I’ve just pressed a cattle prod to his skin. “What?”
I realize my mistake the instant he moves away.
James Graham doesn’t read romance novels.
He probably can’t even spell romance. For sure, the man doesn’t know why the only-one-bed thing is, well …
a THING. By the shocked and somewhat horrified look on his face, he gets the gist of what I meant, and he does not like the idea.
At all. I remember his texts insisting we weren’t sharing a room, and it’s hard not to laugh.
Clearly punctuating every word, he says, “We are not sharing a room. Or a bed.”
The word ever isn’t spoken, but I hear it as clearly as though James shouted it. I want the bowels of the earth to open like a giant mouth and swallow me whole. Does he have to be SO horrified?
James turns his snarly face back to the woman behind the desk, and I shrink away, letting myself get distracted by pint-sized clowns juggling white plastic eggs. One of them drops an egg, which splatters all over the modern hotel carpeting.
Okay, so NOT plastic eggs, then. They shrug, step back away from the yolk, and continue juggling, leaving the mess for someone else to handle.
“Let’s go.” James brushes past me, key cards in hand.
His long legs eat up the stretch of ugly carpeting, heading for the two-story escalator at one end of the lobby.
I scurry after him, trying to avoid a teenage clown tying balloons.
One of them almost hits me in the face, and I duck out of the way.
They’re probably supposed to look like swords, but they all look like penises instead.
And I’m not usually one to crack jokes about stuff like that.
They really, really do NOT look like swords.
When I catch up to James, I’m snickering.
“What?” He raises one dark brow at me, and my laughter dies.
I consider telling James, but the man’s sense of humor is severely underdeveloped. Plus, if he freaked out about me mentioning one bed, his brain might legitimately explode if I mention phallic balloons. “Nothing.”
Glancing back down to the lobby, I watch the teen hand two of the balloons to an elderly couple. Is he just bad at this? Or does he know what they look like? As the elderly couple walks away, the boy gives a high five to another teenage clown.
Oh, yeah. He knows.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you don’t let teenagers make balloon art.
I choke on a laugh. James looks more than a little horrified now. “You like clowns?”
“They’re not my favorite. But I guess they can be funny.”
His gaze flicks down to the lobby and I take the opportunity to admire his clenched jaw, shaven clean just this morning, I’d wager.
Is it bad I plan on keeping a mental tally on how fast his scruff fills in?
A lock of his dark hair falls over one eye as James turns his attention back to me.
Every time his hair falls across his face, I have to curl my fingernails into my palms to keep from brushing it back.
“Clowns are not funny,” he says, looking horrified. “They’re evil nightmare creatures.”
Now I’m really laughing, clutching the rubbery moving rail of the escalator to keep from falling over. We reach the top before I can speak, and James practically has to drag me and my bag off.
“Those are just kids, James!”
“Even worse.” He shakes his head. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep knowing they’re in the hotel.”
He visibly shudders under his leather jacket, and I bite the inside of my cheek, reminding myself how unpleasant this man is. How frustrating. Not funny. Not the kind of man I share smiles or jokes with.
He leads us to a bank of elevators, and my snickers return when just before the doors close on our car, a clown child and his mother rush in, followed by a large group of legging ladies.
James and I are squished into the back of the elevator.
He reaches around one of the women to jab the number ten.
When one of the ladies brushes against James, definitely on purpose, I do my best not to tell her to back off.
The look James gives her does just that, and I have to look down at my boots to hide my grin.
“That’s our floor!” the clown mom says, as though this is the most interesting coincidence ever.
She’s wearing a shirt that literally says, Proud Clown Mom.
Her daughter, probably around Jo’s age, looks right at James and squeezes her red nose.
When it makes a honking sound, James jumps.
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing.
As the legging ladies begin loudly gossiping about their upline, I lean toward James, whispering, “I’ve heard if you make eye contact with a clown while they honk their nose, they can steal your soul.”
His immediate expression is horror, but it slips into an angry mask when he realizes I’m barely holding it together. He gives me a nudge with his shoulder, and I nudge him right back, a little harder.
“Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe, Jamie.”
He glares, a rumbling growl coming out of his chest. I didn’t think growling was a real thing guys did.
But it most definitely is something James does.
It’s stupidly unfair how much I like it.
It totally makes me understand the appeal of all those wolf shifter novels I see selling online. Maybe I need to pick one up…
The clown in front of us bursts into tears, clutching at her proud clown mom, who gives James a dirty look. I can feel the tension vibrating from his body like a motorcycle engine. Tears squeeze out of my eyes, and I know I’m shaking with laughter.
I half expect James to shove the few remaining people out of the way when we get off on the tenth floor, but he manages to control himself.
Thankfully, the still-sniffling clown and her mom turn in the opposite direction.
James moves like an Olympic speed walker down the hall.
I don’t bother chasing him. I’m sure he’ll give me my room key at some point. Probably.
In my original reservation, I requested rooms on different floors. And no, I don’t want to talk about why I thought that separation was a good idea.
Our new rooms are directly across the hall from each other. At least we’re not sharing a wall and won’t have one of those shared doors connecting the rooms. Based on his response in the lobby, James probably would have put a chair under the knob or dragged the dresser in front of it to keep me out.
I wave the card in front of my keypad and it flashes green. I wrangle the door open and shove my bags inside before turning back to James. “Should we meet up and go down together, or …”
He isn’t listening, because he’s fighting with the door and the key card.
Based on the rising tension in his shoulders, the man is about to lose it.
The angrier he gets, the faster he swipes his card and yanks on the door handle, always too soon, which resets the locking mechanism.
The handle is about to break off in his hand.
I flip the deadbolt lock on my door to keep it from shutting all the way and stride over, snatching the card from James’s hand, giving him a nudge out of the way with my hips.
“You’re too impatient,” I tell him, waving the card over the sensor. I wait until the little light flashes green and then turn the handle. “Ta-da! You just have to wait until—what is that smell ?”
I drop the keycard to cover my mouth and nose, jumping back and away from the wave of putrescence wafting from his room. The door slams closed again.
“That’s disgusting.” James covers his mouth too, looking about ready to throw up.
I move away. If he barfs, I’m going to barf. My stomach is as weak as a baby kitten. The smell alone has me halfway gagging. I keep my hand over my mouth until the feeling—and the smell—dissipates.
“This kid in my elementary school used to keep rabbits. That’s what it smells like. A rabbit hutch. With one hundred rabbits making baby rabbits and some of them dying and no one cleaning it, ever.” My own words make my stomach roll again.
“Did you see anything?” James asks.
I shake my head. “No. Should we go back down to the front desk?”
James clenches his jaw, then seems to decide something. “I’m going in.”
“I don’t think you should. What if someone died in there?”
“It didn’t smell like death.”
“It smelled worse than death. Don’t go in there,” I say, as James swipes the card over the door, this time doing it perfectly. “James!”
He glances back at me once like he’s saying goodbye before he charges into the room. I step way back as the smell again permeates the hallway. What if the smell is death? What if someone was murdered in there? What if James never comes back out?
I barely have time to worry, because James comes barreling back into the hallway, his shirt pulled up over his mouth and nose.
It’s a shame the smell is so terribly awful, because I barely get to examine the abs on display.
James bends over, definitely dry heaving now.
My own stomach clenches and rolls. I turn my back on James, giving myself a very strong pep talk.
Stay strong, tummy. Everything is fine. Think of flowers and the smell of the ocean and James’s cologne.
Okay, maybe not that last one.
“It’s so bad,” James says, clearly done with gagging. “So. Bad.”
“But what is it?”
He only shakes his head. “I can’t even—no. Just, you don’t want to know.” His gaze darts back to the door, and he rubs his eyes, like he’s trying to scrub whatever image is now in his brain.
I’m dying to know. But then I look at his face again. Maybe I DON’T want to know.
While James is down in the lobby, I check the closet for murderers (duh) and unpack my clothes and portable steamer, wishing I’d brought a hanging bag to keep things from getting wrinkled. But I didn’t want to appear too high maintenance. Even if I kind of am.
I’m lying on the king-size bed, checking email, when James knocks. The moment I open the door and see his face, I know what he’s going to say. I let him in and he paces for a minute before turning back to me.
“There are no more available rooms,” he says. “They’re going to clean it but …” He makes a face, then shoves his hands in the pockets of his jeans, staring down at the carpet.
Guess I’ll be getting that one-bed trope after all.
Gulp .